Have you ever sensed in your own life that "the handwriting was on the wall"? Or encouraged a loved one to walk "the straight and narrow"?

Have you ever laughed at something that came "out of the mouths of babes"? Or gone "the extra mile" for an opportunity that might vanish "in the twinkling of an eye"?

If you have, then you've been thinking of the Bible.

These phrases are just "a drop in the bucket" (another biblical phrase) of the many things we say and do every day that have their origins in the most read, most influential book of all time. The Bible has affected the world for centuries in innumerable ways, including art, literature, philosophy, government, philanthropy, education, social justice and humanitarianism. One would think that a text of such significance would be taught regularly in schools. Not so. That is because of the "stumbling block" (the Bible again) that is posed by the powers that be in America.

It's time to change that, for the sake of the nation's children. It's time to encourage, perhaps even mandate, the teaching of the Bible in public schools as a primary document of Western civilization.

We know firsthand of its educational value, having grown up in EuropeMark in England, Roma in Irelandwhere Bible teaching was viewed as foundational to a well-rounded education. Now that we are naturalized U.S. citizens, we want to encourage public schools in America to give young people the same opportunity.

This is one of the reasons we created "The Bible," a 10-part miniseries premiering March 3 on the History Channel that dramatizes key stories from Scriptures. It will encourage audiences around the world to open or reopen Bibles to understand and enjoy these stories.

In ‘61, I went to school in a Bronx school (8th grade), everyday we met in the auditorium and started the day with a prayer and a Bible reading (Old Testament, the prayer was always something like “keep everyone safe, help them to be the best they came be”).

3
posted on 03/01/2013 2:22:48 PM PST
by svcw
(Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)

The article anticipated the above argument with the following paragraphs:

_______________________________

Teaching the Bible is of course a touchy subject. One can’t broach it without someone barking “separation of church and state” and “forcing religion down my throat.”

Yet the Supreme Court has said it’s perfectly OK for schools to do so, ruling in 1963 (Abington School District v. Schempp) that “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as a part of a secular (public school) program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court understood that we’re not talking about religion here, and certainly not about politics. We’re talking about knowledge. The foundations of knowledge of the ancient worldwhich informs the understanding of the modern worldare biblical in origin. Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president known more as a cigar-chomping Rough Rider than a hymn-signing Bible-thumper, once said: “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

That is impressive and surprising. With the vast majority of people so wrapped up in an imaginary right to not be offended, it takes a brave Board of Education to risk touching a course that involves the Bible.

9
posted on 03/01/2013 2:38:03 PM PST
by Jacquerie
("How few were left who had seen the republic!" - Tacitus, The Annals)

Three of my grandsons are now in the same school system and I have to say I’m even more impressed with the education that they’re getting. Back in November, on Veteran’d Day, my oldest grandson’s school had an assembly to thank the veterans. They had men and women from all the various services get up and tell their stories. The kids erupted in applause and cheers and wrote really heartwarming essays about patriotism. These people were treated like rock stars.
When I see and hear this I feel that all is not lost.

“It’s time to encourage, perhaps even mandate, the teaching of the Bible in public schools”
Uh, no. Bad, bad idea. They will do it the same way they teach sex education, drawing from the deepest depths of depravity and calling this normal. Allow them to teach the Bible, and they will turn your children into atheists using scripture. If you want your children to know the lessons of scripture, teach them yourself. Hopefully by example.

No, just the 99% who were Protestant Christians, There is not, and never has been any reason for any sane person to think that there was confusion about whether America would use a Christian bible or a Jewish bible in it’s schools, like you expressed.

You seem to just be trolling on this thread.

Go for a walk and maybe your angry, nasty little attitude will go away for a few hours.

27
posted on 03/01/2013 5:39:31 PM PST
by ansel12
(Romney is a longtime supporter of homosexualizing the Boy Scouts (and the military).)

So majority determines what religion is to be given State sanction in this Republic? At a national, state or municipal level? Is the Book of Mormon to be taught in Utah? The Quran in Deerborne Michigan?

28
posted on 03/01/2013 5:47:53 PM PST
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

We have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

They'd end up teaching the Bible as well as they teach, reading, writing and arithmetic. Badly, at best. But everyone will know how to put on condoms, that America is evil, and that lesbian anarchist lumberjacks built America.

Government schools never were, are not now, and never can be religiously neutral.

Solution: Begin the process of privatizing K-12 education. Work toward complete separation of school and state.

At their inception, our nation's system of K-12 socialist-entitlement and single-payer schooling was generically lukewarm in its Protestant worldview. It became progressively secular and by the 1960s was utterly godless. None of it from the beginning was, or is, religiously neutral in content or consequences.

Today, any child who cooperates in the government's godless classroom **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to participate. How could it be otherwise? How can this be religiously neutral? ( Answer: It isn't!) And...They risk learning that privately held religious belief is to be thrown in the trash can at the door to their public life.

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